On the Viking Trail : Travels in Scandinavian America

by Lago, Don

• ISBN13: 9780877458920
• ISBN10: 0877458928
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-04-01
• Publisher: Univ of Iowa Pr

Summary

"When his father developed Alzheimer's disease, Don Lago realized that the stories and traditions of his Swedish ancestors would be lost along with the rest of his father's memories. Haunted by this inevitable tragedy, Lago set out to fight back against forgetting by researching and reclaiming his long-lost Scandinavian roots." "Beginning his quest with a visit to his ancestral home of Granna, Sweden, Lago explores all facets of Scandinavian America - Swedish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, and Icelandic - along the way. He encounters Icelanders living in the Utah desert, a Titanic victim buried beneath a gigantic Swedish coffeepot in Iowa, an Arkansas town named after the famous Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, a real-life Legoland in southern California, and other unique remnants of America's Scandinavian past. Visits to Sigurd Olson's legendary cabin on the banks of Burntside Lake in the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, and Carl Sandburg's birthplace in Galesburg, Illinois, further provide Lago with an acute sense of the Scandinavian values that so greatly influenced, and continue to influence, American society."--BOOK JACKET.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
1 The Swedish Prayer	1	(10)
2 Nightingale Echoes	11	(14)
3 Tippecanoe and the Titanic Too	25	(13)
4 Down the Mythissippi River and the Saga Fe Trail	38	(22)
5 Leaving Gothenburg	60	(14)
6 Listening Point	74	(27)
7 To See the Earth as It Truly Is	101	(10)
8 The Unforgotten Spirit	111	(10)
9 Adventures in Legoland	121	(21)
10 With Liberty and Justice for All	142	(30)
11 Vikings on a Sea of Sand	172	(11)
12 It's Been a Quiet 150 Years in Bishop Hill	183	(13)
13 Melting Pot Stew, with Raisins	196	(14)
14 More Swedish Than Sweden	210	(17)
15 By the Shores of Gitche Gumee	227	(18)
16 Home Run	245	(16)
Notes	261	(4)
Further Reading	265	(4)
Index	269